The Avengers (Marvel)

[Shiny]

I agree with all the statements said against Loki. He sucked horribly in this movie, but I thought it was great. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the Xmen or maybe Spiderman in Avengers 2.

The Hulk was actually my favorite in the film other then of course RDJ as I knew he would be a scene stealer. And yet, I felt all the Avengers got equally represented in this film.

As a super hero action film it stood it's ground. Over-intellectualizing this sort of genre is pointless, but for some reason people still do it.

[Slothy]

Yeah, thanks for picking at the small issue instead of the bigger one presented there: the fact they are tearing up New York instead of military installations, the District of Columbia, or something of real military value. I do apologize for getting their motivation wrong; clearly they have a lot more character because their goal is to get a thing to take over more things.

When part of your argument is that they weren't fleshed out enough, you getting their fundamental reason for being there completely wrong is a rather salient point. But ok, you want to know why they didn't attack military installations? First off, the portal was opened above New York, which actually makes a degree of sense in and of itself because it:
A) Is quite lightly defended making it a very good place to attack and establish a foot hold on Earth so they can defend the portal.
B) Is a highly populated city filled with civilians limiting the ability of the military to actually fight back. Yes, they were willing to resort to nuking it, but a portal powered by a device with a self-sustaining impermeable force field around it probably isn't going to be destroyed or closed by said nuke, and;
C) The Avengers were the biggest threat to them by far. Even Iron Man could barely damage one of the flying serpent creatures and to do it he had to fly inside of it. And there's no telling how many forces they had waiting to pour through. We see a large ship and a lot of soldiers, but they could have had far more to call on if needed. The military would have been outmatched in a straight up fight, SHIELD were all but crippled, and the only real threat was a team of superhero's which included a God and the Hulk. Loki knew if they were beaten the Earth would fall. So you ask why they were attacking New York. I ask you why the hell they would attack anything else when the Avengers were right there?

I know the aliens are not the main villain, and that is my problem; they are the only challenge presented in the film. Loki himself is a total pushover at this point, when Thor joins a crew of superheroes because if he cannot beat Thor, what chance does he have against Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow? I would have preferred a Chitauri commander being the big bad as opposed to Loki, a guy out of his depth.

How is Loki out of his depth? Honestly, explain it to me because you really haven't explained it at all. So Thor beating Loki the first time around means he's somehow an idiot out of his depth? Are you forgetting the part where he easily had Thor exiled and became the King of Asgard because he's a sneaky bastard? Or almost single handedly putting himself in a position to infiltrate SHIELD, lead his mind controlled soldiers there, almost bring the thing crashing out of the sky, then lead an army to destroy a solid chunk of New York. Failing doesn't mean he's inept or out of his depth. If anything he's usually thinking several steps ahead of the hero's and is quite adept at getting them to make the moves he wants them to make.

In a geek's world, in a place where we care about cameos of unnamed villains, we know these things matter. We know the aliens are going to be back and we know Thanos is going to wipe the floor, ceiling, and entire space-time continuum with the Avengers. I unfortunately know a lot about comics I do not read, but I do not know how informed the rest of the non-comic book world is, so all they get is that the Chitauri are bastards and there is a bigger bad in the shadows. That clearly is not enough for anyone who is just going to watch one film.

Yes, because every single one of the people who saw it and enjoyed it are comic book fans and everyone else hated it because they didn't know who Thanos was or that the Chitauri will undoubtedly be back. I'm not sure where you get this idea, but it's clearly not entirely accurate to say the least. People don't really need to know who they are as well as comic book fans to understand the movie and enjoy it as you seem to be arguing.

I am glad it is understood that this film alone is not enough, and that this franchise is about making you want or need to see the other films to get the full import. The problem here, for me, is that clearly sucks balls.

You might want to tell that to George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and anyone else who's ever been involved in a movie series where the story spanned more than one movie. I'm sure those guys would love to know how much their series sucked and why everyone hated them.

I like movies that stand by themselves and are well-contained. I do not want to be told by anyone that I need to see the film before this or after this to get what is going on. If I wanted to do that, I would watch one big movie that had everything in it. I do not want to have to suffer another The Matrix: Reloaded and Revolutions issue; gods, how those two films depended on each other. The Avengers should have had a subtitle, something like The Preface. Ugh.

If you don't want to see these movies because they have interconnecting stories between several characters then the simple solution is to not go see them. Just because you don't like that doesn't mean that it's bad or that the stories have been atrociously handled though. In fact, given the enormous feat it was to even attempt making all of these movies and pulling them together into an Avengers movie while having everything feel cohesive and work together was impressive. The fact that they actually succeeded in making several very enjoyable movies is damn near miraculous. So it's not your thing. Ok. Let's move on.

My response on the Loki issue: again, crap main villain. That he is the major focus in The Avengers is a terrible, horrible, abhorrent idea.

Except that you're pretty alone on this one. Most people consider him one of the better parts of the movie because he was actually handled quite well and Hiddleston did a fantastic job playing the role.

I did sort of space it out, I admit. However, having a new enemy appear suddenly at the end is still super weak.

Except they didn't. Honestly, I might take your arguments a bit more seriously if it didn't seem like half of them are based on not paying attention to the film.

but it really is used as an excuse to avoid a good climatic battle with the film's bad guy, Loki. They simply could not have one done well, apparently, because what they had was the Hulk slam Loki around like a ragdoll.

I don't get why you even wanted a big fight between Loki and all of the Avengers. Even though it was clearly established that in a direct confrontation he could beat most of them, and even go toe to toe with Thor for a bit, he isn't a brawler. Putting him in a direct fight with these characters would require throwing out every bit of characterization they had already established in Thor and early on in Avengers. He is not someone who engages in a direct fight unless it either serves some unrevealed plan he has cooking in the background, or he's absolutely forced to. He is a trickster God in every sense and he would much rather pull strings than simply punch the puppets in the face. Having him fight them directly would be completely out of character for him and would be terrible writing because of it.

2. The early fighting between the heroes (thinking of Iron Man and Thor here) was embarrassingly fabricated. I would have liked some sign that Loki was magically causing it somehow (as I first assumed because it made no sense otherwise). I chalked this up to the movie being too fast and cramped to be developed properly.

While he didn't really have a hand in that (and let's be honest, he didn't have to when you have a hot headed God like Thor and Stark who only thinks he's a God), it was at least heavily implied that he was using his staff to manipulate them into turning on one another in the Helicarrier. Not really a big surprise though when it looked to be powered by the Mind Infinity Gem.

[Madonna]

Let me call it quits here because this is too much when it comes to people's opinions. My apologies if my explanations were not sufficient for you.

[CimminyCricket]

Thor is quite possibly the second physically strongest character in Marvel. He is not just the god of Thunder, but also of strength and he has access to the Odin Force. That put him on par to fight Captain Marvel of the DC Universe (who is a near physical match for Superman). He's pretty effing strong. The Savage Hulk (i.e. the Worldbreaker from Planet Hulk) is a totally different beast from the regular Hulk we've seen in the movies and most of the comics.

[ScottyRedXIII]

I like this film, I didn'T like this film.
CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?

[Depression Moon]

I went to go see it again. It wasn't as good as it was the first time, but I did notice stuff I didn;t notice before like the arc reactor wasn't showing through Tony's shirt in one scene.

Everyone laughed at the same moments again.